Ok... that's some interesting stuff. Tbh I'm chocking on the price of that mushkin ram tho... good timings or not... 167?! Think I'm gonna need to stick with CH-5 or something... if BH's are that costly. Their both winbond tho... so that's the key here. Get winbond chips?

I thought the Zalman would be better... it's really not that much more expensive. 9 bucks more. I figure if you active cool it you would really have a winner. The other Artic one... I'm gonna look into it tho. Anyone else want to comment on this?

Yes. I am going to upgrade my video card. Just not right now since I have one that 'works'. When it does not 'work' for games anymore, then I will upgrade and bring the cooler over to the new gpu. This card I have had for a year or so, and paid 80 bucks for it then. So... guess I can't complain. I figure it can be oc'd and improved a bit also, if I want to do that. I haven't tried. It has a lifetime warranty btw. I have an RMA # for it already, since the fan failed and it's acting up. I'll be replacing it through them when I can spare a GPU for two weeks.

Anyone on this forum have experience with CH-5's? Am I giving up a lot ot save 50% on the price? Is there a better chip for near the same price?

Your saying that I should get an DFI Infinity Ultra over an Abit? It's about the same price as the AN7... reason I don't like DFI is I have used many of their boards back in the day (K6.. not K7), and they had finicky USB controllers, and many other problems I didn't like. Anyone else want to comment on the DFI boards over Abit?

A few corrections.
The DFIs give 3.3Vdimm.
To get over 3.3V you'll need to mod the motherboard AND the PSU's +3.3V rail.
And DFI users also depend on hacked bioses to get by.
In fact , DFI's regular bioses not only suffer in overclocking , but are also barely functional...

And to clear a misconseption.
The DFIs DON'T overclock better than the Abits.
They have a setting in the bios, that the Abits don't have , called "command per clock".
Setting it to enabled or disabled correspond to 1T command and 2T command.
As anyone who has played with it knows , setting 2T is worse for performance than relaxing ALL timings , BUT relaxes both the memory controller and the Ram , therefore making huge fsbs possible.
With 2T , the DFIs get killed by any other nforce2 motherboard , in anything but "theoretical" memory benchmarks like Sandra.
With 1T , they have no handicap in performance compared to the rest but also no benefit in overclocking , apart from the 3.3V Vdimm.

To makes thing clearer , with the same VGA (9800pro) , similar card clocks (430/400) , identical timings (2-2-2-11) my Abit @ 12x220 gave a better 3DMark01 than a DFI @ 10x260 with 2T.....
The same combo couldn't get over 235fsb with 1T.

Now add to that the HIDEOUS build quality of DFI (out of 20 boards in a resident forum , only 3 survived for over a month...) and you'll see why not everyone has a DFI.

As for the Mushkins.
I have BH-5 ram and it's only marginally better than CH-5 ram (2-3% at best).
Not worth all that extra money now is it?
Getting that would give a near zero difference at gaming.
Putting the same money towards an A64 would give a noticeable difference at some games.
Putting the same money towards a 9800pro would give a HUGE difference at ALL games.
Or the easiest of all , just get 1GB of CH-5 instead of 512MB of BH-5/6 (here they cost almost the same).

Easily the worst you can do with your money is get Mushkin or Corsair XL 2-2-2-x ram.

I wanna get an abit... because I know being this is my first time overclocking it's going to be the most explained, supported, etc.

CH-5 sounds pretty good to me... now to decide if I should get 2x512... I know it aint overkill... just I gotta figure if I can spend that extra $100 atm. If I go CH-5 I'd get the buffalo from newegg right?

Anyone have any experience with ebay ram? I see BH-5 ram is avail. there, also 45W Mobile Athlons with IQYHA and MPMW steppings are on ebay.

The Actic Cooling VGA Silencer is for the ATI video cards mainly, by the looks.... one reason I would probly buy nvidia again is that their so highly supported. Most games don't have a problem with them (artifacts etc). If I'm going nVidia on the video card, then I'd be best off with the Zalman passive cooler right? And to overclock just add a Zalman BR123 and mount a fan over it, right? If I were going to do this... would the evercool aluminum fans be to heavy for the BR123?

Also... IS the Zalman decoupled 7000 MORE silent than the Thermalright SP-97? Or should I spend the extra money on the thermalright?

My recommendation is stay away from ebay for new or newish computer parts.
I think you can always find a better price by checking fatwallet and anandtech hotdeal forums, plus...
The shipping charges are unusually high on eBay items lessoning their value, and the items are often the rejects by overclockers and the like.
Folk will buy a couple of something, like cpus, ram, or fans, and off-load the underperforming ones on ebay knowing that most people on eBay won't know the difference and don't know to search hotdeal forums. Hotdeal forums not only tell of where to get products at great deals, but due to their forum nature, members post as to the benefits and problems of a particular product or deal, often with multiple links to important references.

No the forums point to sites that have great deals but dont sell themselves (fatwallet, AT hot deals). For RAM its tough to beat newegg for what they offer (not just good prices but easy RMA in case of trouble).

The advice by anton is spot on. This world would be a better place if people bothered intelligently searching forums.

I have seen on a couple of overclocking forums references to premium memory and Buffalo is included. I don't have personal experience with it but I did a lot of reading on NF7-S forums before purchasing the Buffalo from Newegg. Most concur that the BH-5 is the best memory chip ever made, with the BH-6 chips and the CH-5 chips vying for second. A few get better performance from their CH-5 populated ram then their BH-5 stuff however.

With the vast majority of computers being Intel, and with their marketing pushing the market, it is possible that the fastest ram for AMD systems is past, being the BH-5. The RAM companies can't afford to build their ram chips for the less than 5% of the market that wants low latency high performance memory for AMD systems. Really, most AMD systems, the other 10-20% of the market are targeted toward the lower end, the budget market, and ram speed is not important there. Both the XP and 64 want low latency ram. Both AMD and Intel want high bandwidth ram, but due to the long pipeline design of the PIV, Intel takes a very small performance hit adding more ram latency to an already high latency cpu design. What this brings us to is that it is possible that the Buffalo or some other ram based on WinBond chips are and will remain in perpetuity the fastest ram for overall performance for existing XP or 64 computers. I might be wrong, but the word on the street is there is a reason we don't have better ram, it is a process problem, they have hit-the-wall so to speak. The reason DDRII is coming out is that DDR can't go faster and as Intel is not really hurt by higher latency, they have pushed for a new memory type with higher bandwidth, but it comes with higher latency. Not what us AMD folk want, but our voice is small, however persistent.

Be aware however, that if you want a top performing computer by buying an XP and spend a lot of money putting fancy parts in it, you will end up possibly spending more than a similarly performing 64 system with cheaper parts. The 64 likes low latency ram even more than the XP, but due to the raw performance and integrated memory controller of the 64, it can often outperform, with cheaper memory, an XP with more expensive memory. After comparing XP versus 64 parts and performance, you may find that the 64 is comparably priced. The mobile XP is a special case among CPUs in that it does not have a locked multiplier, unlike the 64 or desktop XPs. It can be possible to get higher performance for some applications with one of these chips than a 64 for the same money by bumping up the FSB given the flexibility of adjusting the multiplier.
Having said that, I just bought a mobile 35 watt 2400, Thermalright 947U, and two sticks of this awesome memory (I hope). I figure that even if I upgrade to a 64 system in a year or more, the memory might well still be about the best available, only time will tell.

If you just need a nice computer, that runs things fast and is near silent, or silent, get a mobile XP, some less expensive 3200 or 2700 ram, probably the Abit NF7-S for $85 at newegg, the 947U at SVC for $20, two panasonic hydrowaves, and other inexpensive parts. You will have 80% of the performance for half the cost. And make sure you use the 8rda.... program that allows auto FSB adjustment.

At this point the Buffalo ram seems my very best choice for the money at $99 for 512 (think I'll get a gig). My question is.... are the buffalo's FOR SURE still CH-5's? I don't know how many of you read the post on the other forum about them being for sure, but that was written June 6... maybe they sold out now, and are on a different batch?

Ok... since I've just about decided on the Buffalo CH-5's based on what I have been told here, what is everyone's opinion of that ram? My main need is that the ram have low latency and be able to handle oc'ing the cpu etc. and not so much that I am going to try to push the ram itself hugely (hence over 3v barrier on NF7-S shouldn't be a problem). Also, the 230FSB or whatever limit on NF7-S's is far less of a concirn to me than a finicky DFI. Honestly, since this is my first time oc'ing, I'm not sure what I am going to do for sure. I just want to know that I got what people recommend and is known to be very good for this. Also... to be rock solid reliable. I don't want to have a system that crashes randomly because the ram is unstable (though very fast when it works). What do you think of my choice to go with these buffalo's?

Am I garanteed they will have those CH-5 chips, is there any chance they might NOT have the CH-5's on them?

The stuff at newegg is indeed CH-5. the w in the model is for winbond, and the c is for ch-5.

This is not a poke, but if you want to find out for yourself in the future about something, some quick and smart googlin will lead the way. I simply went to Winbond's site thru google and looked at their numbering scheme.

I was just re-reading the Zalman 7000 review..... and I noticed that it was mentioned it was not really a silent pc cooling solution.... that there were better for silence. Is this just because of the fan, or it's design or what? I completely forgot reading this. Would a SP-97 be much better for silence? Or some other cooler?

I do plan if I buy the Zalman to mod it's fan to be an aluminum panaflo 92mm. Would this make the zalman the best silent solution available... or are there better? You see I do want to overclock, but also I want to with the least sound. And the most cooling possible. Zalman seemed like a good choice because it is part aluminum, which disipates heat better than copper, and also is part copper, which absorbs heat faster, so that'd be the best of both worlds. Fan can be decouple mounted (see my original post for this topic) so it seemed to me the best there is. Plus it's not as heavy as full copper, so there is less risk to the CPU being damaged by moving the case.

Would I be better off with something else instead for silent cooling, like a SP97 or what?

Pretty nice, is not it? 81degrees on the hottest chip for 3.42Vdimm is IMHO very very good Mine current mosfets temps are notably higher!
http://ax2.wz.cz/show.php?p=wc&id=97&c=7&d=1&v=v2(and I running 1.850Vcore, 174x14 and 2.5Vdimm only with crappy MSI KT6V mobo)

The DFI mobos draw the Vdimm voltage from 5V PSU rail , so there is where you ideas fall to hell - even this is RARE, it's done and allow much higher Vdimm voltage that anything else on Earth

Now about relaxed timings and FSBs Yep, you draw a valid argument, however you forget that the guys overclocking DFI mobos want power too and they using the 1T settings and still getting very high, over 260Mhz for sure Another hint:
)) 260Mhz FSB, not bad, right?

So, I think that we pretty much cured the FSB problem - Abits or Epox get nowhere near these precious DFI mobosNow, about longetivity.
I talking with dude, running 260Mhz with 3.8Vdimm over 6 months. Pretty solid, I would say Also notice how many dudes on the, for example extremeoverclocking.com forum have DFI mobos mentioned in their signatures - check the tread about the CH-5 rams http://forums.extremeoverclocking.com/s ... shkin+ch-5

If they break so soon, that they did not last month, they can't have it, right?

Anyway, if anything breaks that soon, RMA will cure it and I quess that the person should get then other (Abit, if he wish...) mobo...

...ah, and sidenote about the bioses - yea, the old ones officialy on the page available suxx somewhat, that's why there is the link on the new working great ones

Any comments?

mynameisyoung - of course Abit get nowhere near that voltages they pull out from the DFI mobos, man Check their signatures, mostly DFI stuff It seems to pretty nicely backup my current findings, now just verify them with my own experience

_________________"It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong." - Voltaire...just keep folding, just keep folding...my config - my caps

DFI does have great voltage options but everyone always has problems with quality control. And I think their Vdimm only goes up to 3.3v? Maybe I'm mistaken.

And NetTechie, I think we had the discussion about the SP97 on another thread. If you look on the recommended section of this site, the SP97 is on top I think. And you will get better cooling from it than the Zalman.

Its also an easier fit on most motherboards than the Zalman, but for the Abit I think you need to get the Neo Backplate.

Trodas: Yeah I know DFI does get higher voltages than all other boards, the only thing that comes close is the Albatron boards, which go to 3.0v. And it also draws from the 5v rail.
But this is his first time OCing, and everyone's DFI's seem to break down, so I wanna steer him towards a more stress-free OCing

I heard the Epox that you use has trouble with capacitors, whats your take on that?

Damn , I stand corrected , it seems there is a hack to get 3.8Vdimm , although it doesn't seem to work all the time or on all boards.
That's pretty nice for BH-5 ram , although 3.8V will require huge heatsinks (not heatspreaders) and some fan over the ram to avoid meltdown.

My point isn't that the DFI's can't get 250-260 fsb 1T , but that most don't.

When I see DFI overclocks on forums , I first look at their 3DMark01 and compare to ORB results and (surprise surprise) , most of them are pathetic considering the fsb they're using.
Most n00bs use 2T to get uber fsb , failing to see that they don't get any performance.
Everything just to get a pretty wcpuid screenshot , maybe even a Sandra memory.....

Also after talking to some DFI users , I see that it's pretty hard for some to admitt that their's isn't perfect.
One guy (after bragging about his uber fsb) admitted that 1 of the 2 IDE channels didn't work at all....
Also , for some of the most extreme overclockers , RMAing 10 boards to get 1 really good , isn't a problem.....
To add insult to injury , the official importer here (Greece) stopped bringing Lanpartys because of their huge RMA rate.

To end the rant , I do believe that the DFI's are a bit better for overclocking because of their Vdimm , but not enough for me to ignore their shortcomings.

And NetTechie, I think we had the discussion about the SP97 on another thread. If you look on the recommended section of this site, the SP97 is on top I think. And you will get better cooling from it than the Zalman.

Good idea...forgot to look at the recommended section. I remember someone mentioning it before, and disregarding it at the time because the Zalman provided a more silent solution (purhaps not as effective) after decoupleing *I thought*. Now I am starting to rethink it....

mynameisyoung - yep, the oficial bios allow you only 3.3 or 3.2Vdimm, I can't check precisely becuase my page just gived up, however following the link I posted in previous post you learn how to set up to 3.8Vdimm voltage

I don't see much pls having get troubles with therir DFI mobos, but I coule be, of course, mistaken. But there is nothing like stress-free overclocking Overclocking is allways about getting close to the borders of possibility and somewhat even over the edge...

Yes, mine Epox 8RDA+ died after the capacitors close to my mosfets bumped too much (mosfets heatsink temp 132 degrees, capacitors temp 120 degrees) and I added replacement capacitors from the back of the mobo and one of them exploded. That is last time I saw my 8RDA+ mobo working It happen at modest 200x12.5 with 1.850Vcore. From this time I got VERY suspicious about mobos, that having capacitors close to mosfets and even - hell what a stupid idea - placed the mosfets between the capacitors And if you can check photos, Abits are designed like this. Therefore I fear that they end up such badly, as my Epox... DFI using a bit different design witch I hope will survive my fanless case. For more infos/photos about my Epox feel free visit this galery and have funn:
http://ax2.wz.cz/galerie.php?p=wc&c=7&d=1&v=v2

Maxamus - I got two Abit mobos. One ST6R. It never allowed me to go over 120Mhz FSB and any other divider settings that 1:3:3 locked up the mobo for good. Tell me about Abit and top brand again, please Second Abit mobo I have is KD7-G. Not bad one, same mosfets design as DFI and handled 166x15 with 1.850Vcore (that put my Epox after 20min to it's end) for more that week w/o troubles Folding 24/7 ... So I say it depends. But don't say that Abit is paing attention to details and stuff like that. Driver for the gigabite network can't be found anywhere on Abit page for the KD7-G and you have to search over net for yourself. My conclusion - Abit is overrated.

apocalypse80 - well, its likely that the 3.8Vdimm trick require more rencent bios and perhaps even more recent revision of the mobos? I don't know. Todays revisions working well with the latest bioses and that is what matter IMHO. Yup, for BH-5 rams this is a jackpot, but presonally I think that the dude is rather insane You know how long it took you to convince me to run my Mushkins at 2.91 instead of 2.77, right? So you perhaps got the idea, what I think about 3.8V The good news is, that even w/o cooling the mosfets the mobo can make it. This giving my the opinion, that even with my fanless enviroment the mobo is capable of doing like 225x12 with 1.9Vcore and 3.0Vdimm stable for long time

And my point it, that there is virtually no Abit mobo that can get at 1T to 260MHz, not even over

I can't fight the accusing of the DFI users from their blind loyality to DFI Well, they are, erm, different There are even some things that are pretty bad from DFI, like the fact that their latest official bios are almost half year old (!) and w/o the latest users likely to experience cold boot issues with mobile Bartons and so on... I quess we wait and see - you know, Im really perefectionist and I will not overlook any shortcoming of the mobo

Maxamus - well, goog question. Even I have electronics degree, I'm still not sure WHY my Epox died... Or what happens. The irony of life is, that few days before it happen I chatted with friends and it finds out, that even I stressing my components hard with very high temps, bad airflow and fanless cases, I come out as the best one from my overclocking pals, because - at this time - I have ZERO died componets into my overclocking path Now I got one dead - or almost dead, It seems that the mobo want kick in, showing FF on the diagnostic led as okay, ready to go, but there is no voltage past the mosfets (only 0.3 - 0.5V instad of 3.3, 5 and Vcore/Vdimm) and I can't replace them, because I can't desolder them, because there is a heatsink on them what I glued by ArcticSilver epoxy and I can't remove it So I don't know.

From what you suggest, I should say - memory pushed to its limits? Not a problem for mobo, just overheating the NB, if it's cooled enought, not a problem. Sooner you get very bad errors that you fry the NB Pushing CPU to it's limits? Dude, get a good water or phase cooling, cool the mosfets too, and you are happy Too much voltages? Well, yep, using 3.6V on 3.3V rail cause the mosfets overheat even more, but allow you to get more stability on very high Vcores and such. I tried 2.20Vcore and it worked. Maybe there is where the death of the Epox start, because about from this time the mosfets started overheating very much... My quess is, that the mosfets start overheat because the capacitors capacity after the 2.20Vcore get lover because they got too much overheated and therefore the mosfets starting overheating even more, and this process iniciated the death end circle... Maybe. It's one of my ideas how it happend...

So far, the mobo is not possible to destroy, unless you use hammer - IF you pay attention to the temperatures and cool the overheating components - and sometimes coolina pasively is not enought.
The AIRFLOW is need

I recently tried to cool-down the NB on my replacement MSI KT6V mobo and ended up with at least 3-4x bigger NB heatsink
(http://ax2.wz.cz/show.php?p=wc&id=94&c=7&d=1&v=v2 ) but since my airflow is next to zero, It did not helped much, in fact, I got about 1 degrees down at best... Lesson lerned - I reorganized some cables, and even with only passive airflow my temps droped 9 degrees for NB and 4-6 degrees for CPU. Still, top FSB of this MSI crap is about 174Mhz. When I used the mobo w/o case on my testing desk, It folded stable at 185Mhz. What this telling you is obvious, is not it?
It's about the cooling.

Watercool the mosfets, phase cool the CPU, install 4 hi-flow fans to your case and you can get any overclock you ever want w/o worry about the mobo Of course, unless you selected Abit mobo with mosfets between capacitors, that can't be cooled

BTW, there is one of my very strange recent toughts. Don't cool with heatsink something, what is not overheating DENGEROUSLY. Why? Because for example, what happen, if I cool my HDD? Let's imagene installing a ZM-2HC2 silent HDD heatpipe cooler on my HDD. My HDD temp probably drop from 57-63 degrees about 10 or even more degrees down, but where the heat go? I tell you. To the case and to heat-up the rest of the components! So, I better did not cool it, because the temp are well with the operational limits, because when I cool it, the heatpipes draw the heat to the air inside of my case more effectively. Effectively heating up my case and other components. Im going to say that with more heatsinks and bad airflow you sometimes can do more worse that good, and I, for example, never install a heatsink on the SB - just because the temperature hitting 60 degrees? To the hell with SB It can handle it.

So far, I starting to get convinced that too much BIG heatsinks actually killed my Epox mobo into my fanless case.
Sounds weird? Come on, I whould like to heat better theory or explaination that how heatsinks "support airflow" instead of restricting it, and how for example "cooling things down" did not increase temps into my case...

_________________"It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong." - Voltaire...just keep folding, just keep folding...my config - my caps

Well 270fsb on an Intel system isn't that high , I guess that any motherboard could handle it with the right ram.
That said , the world record for fsb belongs to an (extremely modded) IC7-G doing a bit over 400fsb.

No manufacturer is perfect.
Many people had problems with Abit AN7 until later bios revisions (not to mention the "cut trace" issue).
Same goes for the 10.5x multi problem on the NF7-S , until tictac bios.
And lets not forget about Abit (Intel) boards problems with dividers (asynchronous operation) , mainly 5:4.

It seems the current "main" problems with DFI boards are cold boot issues and bios corruption , both very common.
Also of note is the very poor performance of it's S-ATA controller.
They might be solved later on , but until then...

The main reason I still recommend the NF7-S is that it has been in the market for a longer time and so pretty much all it's bugs have been fixed.

Maxamus - your FSB is actually pretty low for a Intel QUAD pump mobo (just a provocation and also telling the truth, that you simply CAN'T compare Intel and AMD in terms of FSB clock - both CPUs utilize entierly different architecture and both have the strenghts and weakness )

Of course, there is no "perfect" mobo and no "perfect" brand...

...when they run out of some chips during production, they always solder there just about anything to get their production running, no matter of if they are Abit, DFI, Epox or almost noname Jetway and such...

So, this is one reason, why overclocking is always hit or miss thing. For example, mine Epox dies on fairly not too overclocking settings. A miss. Even before it can pass post at 245Mhz, but can't pass memtest over 225Mhz and when come to operation, it never worked over 200Mhz stable. Even 202Mhz means crash sooner or later... So much for Epox, right?
But on other hand you find ppls with Epox on amazing FSBs, claiming that they are stable. Eh, I quess that they are stable when about 20% lover, but this is still far away from what I managed to go...

Similar examples could be drawn from other mobo manufacturers. The DFI problems with cold boot is past with any more recent that the oficial bios - you even got the mobo with much more recent one The bios corruption problem fall (luckily) to the same category. (PS: the DFI bios reloaded is a good thing anyway ) ....about the SATA issues I heard too, but not listening very well, since I never even plan to enable the SATA But from the fractions what I remember is, that some ppls reporting SATA problems got much better with the latest bioses, that took care of the problems well.

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